1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved X-ray imaging system employing lobster eye X-ray focusing technology.
2. Background Art
Many industrial and military applications require the capability for non-invasive inspection of objects through the concealments, walls, ground, bulkheads of boat and ship containers. For this purpose, agencies are seeking a portable (or handheld) instrument that can accurately analyze and visualize material hidden from view behind ground, walls, and bulkheads. The inspection device must not endanger inspection personnel, must be simple to operate, must minimize disruption of commercial and private property, while ensuring full space accountability. The immediate application is detection by inspection personnel of illegal cargo, and other contraband in ocean-going containers, aboard ships and boats, in airports and other check-points and also landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Means of through-wall or through-ground inspection include optical, microwave, acoustic and X-ray techniques. The optical thermal imaging systems cannot see hidden objects that are at the same temperature as the walls. Acoustic systems do not penetrate well through metal walls, and their low frequencies are dangerous to operators and stowaways. Microwave radars cannot penetrate metal bulkheads. Although state-of-the-art X-ray scanning BISs can penetrate walls and internal construction structures, they are bulky, expensive, and above all hazardous. To assemble an X-ray image, the current BISs use expensive, massive, limited view, scintillation detectors with photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and a scanning pencil beam of X-rays. Generating the scanning pencil beam is both inefficient and hazardous to the operator, and a person hiding behind a wall. This is not a safe handheld, man-portable instrument. Therefore, state-of-the-art X-ray inspection systems also fail to meet requirements for ship compartment inspection.